What advice would you give a junior engineer?

Cornelia BiacsicsPrincipal Program Manager @Microsoft

What advice would you give to a junior in this era?

Always stay curious. Listen first. Be open to learning, and never be afraid to ask questions. Seek connections. Find people you can learn from. Take time to learn and to listen. Technology changes super fast, and curiosity is everything that you need. You should always ask yourself: what if?

Yves ColinCustomer Engineer Data Management @Google

How can a junior stand out in your view? What makes a good junior versus a bad one?

I think they need to understand market trends and adapt quickly. They need to understand that they also need to have an architect's mindset, since they'll be judged less on the volume of code they produce than on how they use the tools. They're going to have to rise above and stay curious. But that's always been true, I think.

Damien ClochardCo-founder & Product Owner @Dalibo

How can a junior stand out in your eyes?

It's a bit of a bad example because, as I said, I fight for us to hire more juniors, but we hardly do. Partly because of a specific constraint: we're almost entirely full remote, which makes it really hard to onboard people in their first job. We can't offer them the environment to develop and learn. Starting out in remote work is genuinely hard. We just don't know how to do it well. So today we end up setting those profiles aside not by choice, but as a practical reality.

Ege GüneşTeam Lead, Kubernetes Operators @Percona

What do you recommend to junior developers?

One thing I often notice is poor Git usage. Git is an incredibly important tool, and while it's not easy to master, understanding how to use it properly is a fundamental skill for any developer. In particular, commit messages matter much more than people think. A good commit should clearly explain what changed and why. Many junior developers treat commit messages as an afterthought, and it immediately shows. In my experience, poorly written commits are one of the strongest signals that someone is still early in their career.

Cedric VillemainPresident / CEO @Data bene

And what's your own advice for young people?

If you believe it's possible, do it. My advice would be to go where you think it's worth going. I'm 50, but the years go by fast. If you wait to do the things you want to do, you might not get to them. A good way to do what you want is to tell yourself "I can get there, I can do this, so I'm going to do it." Once it's decided, you make it work.

Mikaël FrancoeurSoftware Engineer @Turso

What's the specific advice for juniors?

It would be to become the reliable person. The person people can say: "We have a problem, we'll hand it to them and they'll see it through." Becoming someone who is responsible, who projects a professional image. I'm not talking about wearing a suit and tie, but being the person on whom non-trivial things can rest.

Franck PachotDeveloper Advocate @MongoDB

And what would your advice be?

Be curious and be able to change your preconceived ideas. In the end, it is the same thing. Curiosity without questioning yourself just gives you someone who accumulates certainties. What matters is going to look and accepting that the answer may be different from what you expected.

Bertrand DrouvotSenior Database Engineer @AWS

What do you think can help young developers today?

Experience matters, but even without experience, people should focus on understanding fundamentals and learning how to challenge AI-generated content. I also think AI can help people create their own products or companies more easily now. It has become much faster to build something and validate whether an idea works or not.